“Nobly sung,” he cried. “Where got you that song?”
“Once I heard a pretty lady chant it as she walked in a garden. And I have heard children sing it far away from here—and long, long ago.”
The man’s craziness had ebbed a little, and he was staring into the fire. Alastair, determined that he should not look at the watch, coaxed him to sing again, and praised his music, and, when he did not respond, himself sang—for this new mood had brought back his voice—a gypsy lay of his own land, a catch of the wandering Macadams that trail up and down the seacoast. Gentle and soothing it was, with fairy music in it, which the Good Folk pipe round the sheilings on the July eves. Ben beat time to it with his hand, and after it sang “Colin on a summer day” with a chorus that imitated very prettily a tabor accompaniment. … Alastair’s glance at the watch told him that more than an hour had passed, and he realised, too, that the noise of the Journeyman was dying down.
“Your turn,” said the gypsy, who had let his legs sprawl toward the fire, and seemed like one about to go to sleep.
An unlucky inspiration came to the young man. He broke into the song of “The Naked Men” and he let his voice ring out so that the thing might have been heard outside the dwelling. For a moment the gypsy did not seem to hear; then he frowned, as if an unpleasant memory were aroused; then suddenly he woke to full consciousness.
“Hell and damnation!” he cried. “What warlock taught you that? Stop the cursed thing,” and he struck the singer in the face.
Then his eye saw the watch, and his ear caught the cessation of the Journeyman’s grinding. His madness flared up again, he forgot all about the ring, and he leaped upon the prisoner like a wildcat. He dragged him, helpless as he was, from the settle and flung him across the table, sending the remains of supper crashing to the floor. Then he left him, rushed to the wooden partition, and tore it apart. From the black pit thus revealed a thin grey vapour seemed to ascend, and the noise was like the snarling of hounds in kennel.
“John is hungry,” he cried. “I have kept you waiting, my darling, but your meat is ready,” and he was back clutching his prisoner’s middle.
The despair and apathy of the earlier hours had gone, and Alastair steeled himself to fight for his life. The gypsy’s strength was always respectable and now his mania made it prepotent. The young man managed to get his manacled ankles crooked in a leg of the table, but they were plucked away with a dislocating wrench. His head grated on the floor as he was dragged towards the pit. And then he saw a chance, for the rope that bound his wrists caught in a staple fixed in the floor, apparently to make an anchorage for a chain that had worked an ancient windlass. The gypsy pulled savagely, but the good hemp held, and he was forced to drop the body and examine the obstacle. Alastair noted that beyond the pit was a naked dripping wall of cliff, and that the space between the edge and the walls of the shed inclined downward, so that anything that once reached that slope would be easily rolled into the abyss. Death was very near him and yet he could not despair. He lifted up his voice in a great shout for help. A thousand echoes rang in the pit, and following on them came the gypsy’s crazy cackle.
“Do not fear, pretty darling. John’s arms are soft bedding,” and he dragged him over the lip of stone beyond which the slope ran to the darkness.
Once again by a miracle his foot caught. This time it was only a snag of rock, but it had a rough edge to it, and by the mercy of God, the bonds at his ankles had been already frayed. The gypsy, who had him by the shoulders and arms, tugged frantically, and the friction of the stone’s edge severed the last strands. Suddenly Alastair found his ankles free, and with a desperate scramble tried to rise. But his feet were cramped and numb and he could not find a stand. A tug from the gypsy brought him to the very edge of the abyss. But the incident had wakened hope, and once again he made the vault ring with a cry for help.
It was answered. The dim place suddenly blazed with light, and there was a sound of men’s voices. For an instant the gypsy loosed his hold to stare, and then with a scream resumed his efforts. But in that instant Alastair’s feet had found on the very brink a crack of stone, which enabled him to brace his legs and resist. The thing was trivial and he could not hold out long, but the purchase was sufficient to prevent that last heave from hurling him into the void.
The gypsy seemed suddenly to change his mind. He let the young man’s shoulders drop, so that he fell huddled by the edge, plucked the long shagreen-handled knife from his belt and struck at his neck. But the blow never fell. For in the same fraction of time something bright quivered through the air, and struck deep in his throat. The man gurgled, then grew limp like a sack, and dropped back on the ground. Then with a feeble clawing at the air he rolled over the brink, struck the side twice, and dropped till the noise of his fall was lost in the moaning of the measureless deep.
Alastair lay sick and trembling, not daring to move,
